November 25, 2014

The 'Battlegrounds' DLC includes 15 hand-crafted tactical maps that present new challenges and opportunities in combat. You may start out surrounding or encircled by your enemies, or need to defend or assault tight chokepoints. The visual variety in Legendary Heroes is better than ever with ruined Imperial highways, dark fortresses buried deep in desert sandstorms, and more.

More than 20 stamps for the map generator to use to create unique gameworlds for each playthrough are also included in the 'Battlegrounds' DLC.

Six new monsters are free with the 1.8 patch today, and the latest Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes DLC adds 15 new tactical maps and more to keep every playthrough as fresh as possible.

Legendary Heroes v1.8 adds adds six all-new monsters with unique abilities to the game, including the flame-wreathed Gilden Lion and the battle-frenzied Obsidian Legion. The patch will be applied to your game automatically next time you connect to Steam.

Reviews

“This standalone expansion is a wonderful fantasy strategy game in its own right...”
4 out of 5 – The Escapist

“Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is a terrific 4X strategy game that builds upon the good work done in its immediate predecessor last year.”
8.0 – GameSpot

“You don't have to be any kind of strategy savant to appreciate what this exceptional release has to offer.”
8.5 – Game Informer

About This Game

The Fallen Enchantress seeks to destroy the civilizations that have risen from the ashes of the Cataclysm. Fortunately, your fame has spread and great heroes have been drawn to your banner. With your new champions, you will confront new horrors like liches, brood hunters, banshees, and the dreaded hergon.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is the new standalone expansion to Stardock’s turn-based, fantasy strategy game. Players will forge a new empire in a world sundered by powerful magic, fight against terrible creatures, complete quests and rediscover lost secrets in their bid to rule the world of Elemental.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is a standalone expansion. No prior games are required to play.

Key Features

Gain Champions Through Fame: Champions are no longer simply found, instead, they seek you out based on the amount of Fame your kingdom has generated. And not all of these legendary heroes were Men or Fallen…

New Leveling System: Your sovereign and champions now evolve through a skill tree that visually allows you to plan what kind of hero you want him or her to be. Make your mage into a powerful Necromancer, or train your Assassin in special attacks that bleed the life from your enemies.

Updated Tactical Battles: Battles are now more intense with additional special skills, combat mechanics, spells and new maps.

New Monsters: The legendary heroes didn’t reach our lands alone. The events of the Fallen Enchantress have raised the dead and caused forgotten creatures to return to the surface of the world.

More Magic: New spells like ‘Lightning Form’ and ‘Raise Skeletal Horde’ add new options and dangers to battle.

i'm not typically a serious fan of city/army builder games like this, but Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is one of those games that is just what I was looking for at the time. If you're a fan of Sid Meier's Civilization series, this game MIGHT be up your alley. In my opinion, it is way better in many ways. A lot of people say differently... So here's a rundown of why I recommend this game:

1) You get to have a 'main character', which you either pick from, or make your own through customization options. You can also make your own faction up, so to speak and pick your perks etc.2) There is an EXTREME PLETHORA of troop choices due to customization options to create the exact troop type you are looking for, You can even customize how they look, including gender. Seriously, this is an amazing thing that I haven't seen in too many other games of this type.3) The battle system is like a hybrid of regular turn-based strategy games of this nature, and something like a less-intricate version of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Agarest (tactical battle games). See your unique leader and troops battle across actual landscapes, with terrain that affects movement and line of sight in a much more detailed way than typical builder games. Strategize your positions. Feel like you're actually battling!!

There's really only one big problem I have with this game, and that would be the lack of multiplayer... I hear it crashes a lot, but I haven't really had much issue with this. Other than that however, I don't really see a whole lot wrong with it. I saw someone saying it's not a 'completed game' but I felt pretty content with it. I mean, I wouldn't go paying 40 dollars for it but I wouldn't pay that for almost any game, simply because that's a lot of money to me... I don't make that much...

Should you buy this game...? It really depends on what you want in a game. If you're a high-fantasy fan who loves customization and city building, maybe. If you're a fan of grid-based tactical combat games, it just might be up your alley. If you like all of that stuff, you'll probably like this game. Should you spend 40 dollars on it? Ehhhh..... I wouldn't but if you have tons of money to blow, why not? I would honestly wait for a sale, or do some more research beyond my review... I hope i helped you out somehow in your decision however.

When I first saw what Stardock wanted to do with Fallen Enchantress, I became excited. All those video diaries about the lore of the world, the customization options, and the options for what you could do made me very excited for the game! Then I paid $40 for a complete mess of a game that, aside from being buggy, was very much a half ♥♥♥♥♥ project that did not live up to my expectations. I gave up on that, but then I heard of the "expansion" to a bad game with a great concept: Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes! Although it looked like the exact same game for the exact same price, it couldn't be completely the same, right? They probably had to change EVERYTHING to fix it, essentially creating a new game, right? Nope. As far as I'm aware, there is no difference except for maybe a new faction and maybe a new map. As such, here are the reasons why not to give Stardock any more money ever.

1). Tedious city building. To me, this game looked very much like a customizable game of Civilization that, considering the modders of the popular Fall from Heaven mod for Civ IV were working on this, I expected it to play like Civilization. However, although some aspects of city building are similar to the Civ series, it falls considerably short of it. Settling of cities can only be on certain places, and those places start with a predetermined Food, Production, and Mana. Once you place your city, there is no way to work the surrounding land to enhance them. Instead, you gain more "resources" by building outposts next to resources (iron, crystal, and mana) and then build upgrades on those resources. Your cities do not take part in this process, instead being used solely for unit production. Although you can build buildings to "improve" your cities, they never really seem to improve them that much. The game decided to follow "a lot of a little is a lot" making city progression a very long and tedious task that does not factor in units or later buildings, meaning they take FOREVER to build.

2). Pointless Unit customization. In the game, you start off with a hero and a settler. You can explore and complete quests with your hero, and found a city with your settlers. Once your city is founded, you are allowed to customize units much like you can customize your hero. At first this sounds really cool; the possibilities are seemingly endless with the amount of equipment you can give your troops to improve them. But then you realize that equiping a troop with horses doesn't make them cavalry, or that equiping them with spears doesn't make them spearmen. Instead, the game simplifies combat to three basic unit types: Ranged, melee, magic. As you can guess, each type dictates how each unit attacks, either from range with a bow or magic, or up close with a variety of melee weapons. Although each weapon has a unique "attribute" that gives them additional functionality, these attributes hardly matter during battle. The only thing that matters is how hard each weapon hits, which leads me to my next point.

3). Simplistic, boring, unbalanced combat. The game was trying to go for a hybrid between TurnBasedStrategy and TurnBasedTactics. In this case, combat takes place on a relatively small grid (reminiscent of chess) with environmental textures that add nothing to said grid. Both teams start on opposite sides of the grid and must kill each other. This is typically how combat works in TurnBasedStrategies(like Tactics Ogre or FFTactics), however, it is not handled well. The only variety of the combat grid involves the textures, so every battle will essentially play out the same way. Mix that with units that have no range limits, and early battles become a slogfest that is determined by how many ranged units you have/can kill quickly. The most complex tactic is which unit to focus fire on. There is no positioning/elevation advantage, useful abilities, unit variety advantage, or change in AI behavior. The AI have a suicidal mentality, and why wouldn't they? It doesn't matter if they die while targetting a single unit, they are only there to be a pawn in the great battle of attrition. If this sounds like the game is challenging, don't fall for it. This only affects early game, late game is a cake walk due to how OP troops become. Troops, unlike heroes, can be upgraded in SIZE, meaning that more soldiers will be in that troop. This increases the health and damage of the troop unit with each additional member. This means that troops will EASILY out perform any amount of heroes at any level with any equipment. These essentially godly units can only be countered by other godly units, which are...never made. Once you reach the max level of equipment, its smooth sailing.

4). All around lack of variety. Overall, there is very little variety in gameplay. All the possibilities of the game are quickly exhausted after a few hours. The only victory condition I am aware of is conquest, making the game easily beaten and done with. There is no point to unit variety, so unless you want to create a challenge for yourself, there is no reason to change it up. With no random map generation, Stardock has resorted to selling map pack DLC for maps that add no actual variety or unique experiences to the game. Aside from singleplayer random game, there is a "story/campaign" that apparently tells a lore driven story of...something. I have played the campaign and found it very similar to a random game with extra random scenarios. It is apparent that the developers wanted the antagonist faction to be an overwhelming superpower that the player had no chance of standing up against, but I felt no sense of ugency to complete the story objectives. The final objective is for you to bring your hero into a portal and fight demons as a final resort to stop the "invasion"(or something), but I found myself conquering their unneccessarily large quanitity of cities with ease(once again, late game cakewalk). However, stepping into the portal is a completely different story. Apparently your hero forgots to bring his army, because its him against max level demons. As you would expect, he gets easily slaughtered. This HUGE difficulty spike is artificial and unfair, as there is no way of preparing for it. Apparently the only way to win is to use magic the scenario GIVES YOU, meaning there is no way to prepare or create a solution.

In conclusion, if you like the premise of a customizable TBS/T game that is probably easily modded(?), then this game is right up your alley. It is VERY rough and definitely needs a modder's touch, but the core concepts are there and, in the end, that's all you can hope for...*cries*

Not impressed. This game hits you from the start with unwanted hassle. You must create an additional user account on the developers servers to play the game. I don't want that. If a game is on Steam, it shouldn't need anything extra. No additional DRM or more accounts or anything. They want you to have an account so they can sell you tiny-expansions, which are annoyingly advertised in-game.

Then you start the game and find out it is unbalanced in a dozen ways.I have gone through the motions of playing the game, and It really just isn't fun. Maybe it's because I have played dozens of games like it (that are better or more interesting). The designers created a complicated lore/item system, but forgot to make the game mechanic interesting.

I bought this on a steam sale. Still disappointed that I spent money on it. Still annoyed about having to create an extra account that I get emails for. Still annoyed at the publisher Stardock software.

4/10. If I was on a hypothetical deserted island and this was my only game.. I would play it. I guess.

Elemental: World of Magic was released in October 2012. It's November 2012, and Legendary Heroes - the successor to the broken Fallen Enchantress, itself the successor to the unplayable Elemental - is still an unfinished game. If you were foolish enough to buy Elemental, as I was, and then to pay for the Legendary Heroes "expansion", and the DLC - which scarcely qualifies for the name, as each pack contains content which should have been included in the base game - you've spent close to $100 on what remains a barely playable game, once you account for the frequent crashes, the terrible combat AI, and the half finished diplomacy options.

If Stardock puts this game on sale for $10, give it a go. It's frankly not worth more than that. Take it from a sucker who paid way too much for a poorly made game.

Stardock was aiming to best Master of Magic with this title and I personally credit it with bringing "cloth" style strategic maps into vogue.

Pros: Probably the 4x on the market with the most variety of customization options. Faction and World Customization are well done. Quests are nicely done, provide a mix of history and contemporary stories.

Biggest Con: No Multi-player.

The Middling: Graphics are good, but not great - everything meshes stylistically, but the game lacks Endless Legend or Age of Wonders level of detail. Hero/Troop Poses are either sad or hilarious depending on your perspective. The AI Empires are less of a threat (usually) than the wandering monsters. (this may be due to my settings choices)

Still, if I want to build an empire by pushing back the wilderness, slaying elemental lords, dragons, and bears in the process, this is a great way to spend doing it. The epic monster zones, hero levels, and the questing system on top of the huge research trees, and the city building/wonder game places Fallen Enchantress above Civ V in terms of replayability.

Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is the most played game I own in my library. The game is beyond fun, it is everything a civilization builder should be and more. The freedom to customize your kingdom from citys, to commanders (heroes) and army units is above and beyond anything I've seen in the gendre. But were the game truly shines is it's hud system. The hud gives you at a glance all the pertinent information you require in an unobtrusive way. The game is beyond fantastic and I highly recomend it to everyone who wanted to rule a fantasy kingdom.

Civilization meets Heroes of Might and Magic. A decent 4x game with an indepth combat/hero system and the ability to make your own units. The cell shaded art style will be loved by some and hated by others. No multiplayer but still a pretty cool world filled with enough magical creatures and stuff for at least a few playthroughs. There is no multiplayer, just a freeplay/sandbox mode and two scenarios.

This game is pretty good, just for a while. Combination of Heroes of might&magic and Civilization is really great idea and works. In my opinion this game doesn't offer you many options for tactics, just go and crush everything on your way, and it gets unentertaining after few wins, you do not even have to bother about your cities or resources, you can win just like nothing with one army running around looting and getting xp. I played just for 2 factions and made 2 wins - by conquest and completing master quest, and there is no more this game can give me, but few more DLC's which are really overcharged. I'd like it give it another chance, maybe later.

This is a 4X+ fantasy game that shows the years spent in its development and polish.

Standout Features:- Huge game with a large technology tree, and many rules. - Easy to learn but difficult to master (I take this as a plus......)- Many ways to play, and many ways to win- A variety of maps- Resource Management - RTS Style for mana, iron, horses, etc- Abilities for units- DLC adds to the game and makes it much better- Customization for everything: factions, leaders, city upgrades, unit design (alpha centauri style)- Notably, good customisation for game start and in-game options. Really fine controls help you tweak things.

The only cons are:- The AI is bad. This is typical, however, for the genre. Even Civ V AI was bad.- No multiplayer. In any case, games are usually too long for efficient multi-player- Help could have been more detailed for the more intricate aspects (and power players)- Tiny game-provided campaign (but the customization should be enough to keep you occupied)- Game balance could be slightly better

This game was a lot of fun. At first it was a little hard and I didn't know what to do. I quickly lost my first scenario as I was overrun by both wild creatures and enemy forces, but I felt like I learned from that first atempt. I used my new knowldege to fire up the same scenario again. This time I got much further but eventually I lost again. With each defeat I learned more and used that knowledge to improve my game. I learned that when I make custom units if I want to be able to upgrade them to plate mail later I need to give them the plate mail ability even if my current armour is only leather.I also learned that once a unit is trained as a foot soldier of some type it can not be given a mount latter on (I don't like that rule but knowing it helps out).

there are small differance between the factions but I don't really see that much of a differeance between how the factions play. The biggest differeance is the Sovierng you start with.

I wish there was some form of multiplayer even if it was hot seat. I also wish there was naval units/war fare. Whenever you run into a body of water there is no way to hop on a boat and travel. Still I've had lots of fun playing this game. Especially when fighting dragons and other big optional bosses on each map.

This is a really fun fantasy strategy game, it has a really nice feel to it, being able to master really powerful in game items like dragon acolytes, ogre lairs and mercenry camps bring a real sense of satisfaction to advanced gamplay. There is a really cool quest and treasure system you can use to get experience for your heros. There are even raid type areas you can go into for bonus loot and there are plenty of ledgendary items your heros can loot.

now the negatives, if you play for lets say more than 5 hours in a game in total all the quests dissapere and all the special areas dry up and it hard to level your heros without declaring war which inevitably due to you having most probably 1 or more dragon and several troll and ogre units with heros geared and level beyond god status you will wipe out the enemy 1 city at a time every time very easily with no contest.

The diplomatic element in the game is pretty much non existant. if you are more powerful than the enemy they will pay you to leave them alone and vice versa. there is no other end game plan as far a diplomatic ai is concerned.

my gripe is end game play is a massive black hole that doesnt even seem to really exist, once you have power and massive arimie there is no reason to play the game you cant5 even quest for fun, if they had more diplomacy options the game whold have lasted longer.

Some times a game will get bugged and crash to desktop every few turns no matter how much you reload it. that contributes to lack of desire to finish a game after a few hours of play. The roaming monster mechanics can be a real pain as a massive all powerful elemental torments your realm and is immune to damage until you get more powerful items, this is a flaw in the gamplay and should not happen as it is massivly unfair as the start of the game is a massive land grab even the very large maps are quite smalland there is no place to go except wrestle with a beast you cannot kill that keep rampaging through your settlements.

having said all that it is still a fun and interesting game with colourful elements you cant find anywhere. its incredibly immersive and has a real D&D feel to it. If you bought it it would keep you interested for quite some time. But as i mentioned before it hasnt been built to reach a deffinitive apex and your advanced games will simply be logged out of and never played on again. so potentially it has lifespan on an epic scale but your games will nevrr achieve these levels and its sort of frustrating leaving epic loot and god heros simply because there is no more game left.

Interesting game, and I like a lot of the ideas. The overall concept is solid, and it implements some brilliant improvements over similar games in places. I really want to like this game a lot more than I do.

But... (and we all knew THAT was coming)The graphics are tolerable until you get to the hero units. Human models are Not Good. The clothing options feel like they must be at several inches thick in places.Depending on your chosen 'race', you will have resource shortfalls for a good long while. Also, heroes cost a fairly high amount of upkeep in gold... and when one is available to purchase, the game tends to not give you the option of NOT purchasing.The entire backstory and current story of the game setting feels a bit bland and unrefined.and the tech and skill trees are... how to put this... short. on. options.

Overall, while the game is not strictly BAD, it is not nearly as good as the somewhat unfinished, glitchy Civilization 4 TCMod that came before it.I'm still likely to play this once in a while, but it's just going to send me scuttling back to Fall from Heaven 2. I'm recomending it though, since honestly, it's better than a lot of the alternatives OTHER than FfH2, which can be twitchy.

An unfinished, unbalanced, unresponsive game with a buggy GUI and a bad&buggy engine and no game-balance in sight. Even the old "Master of Magic" is better than this game and the AI is worse than the AI from "Civilization 1".Oh and external registration required... Don't forget to uncheck the 'spam e-mail' from them.It's just a bad attempt at their 'sequel' of "Master of Magic" that failed completely. But you can buy their fairly expensive DLC's that will vaguely remind you of the Tropico DLC's in terms of 'price to content ratio'.

The music is extremely terrible, the sound effects seem like they are 20 years old. Ambient sounds are hardly present, if at all and the graphics are... barely doable.

You can't start a city wherever you want, you must do so on predefined locations. That is a serious limitation for me.

Moving units on the world map can be a bit slow (the game needs to calculate the pathing or something). Even with low settings and a fast PC, I can't get it improved at all even though all my cpu's and videocard and such are only running at like 20%. There is something really wrong with this engine.

The GUI is very unresponsive and if you are too fast (like you return to the main menu while the game was about to show you a level-up menu or something) the game gets permanently stuck.

The AI may randomly invade you with pioneers (settlers) that destroy your improvements.The AI may ignore neutral monsters and plays a different game than you. They won't be attacked as often (or not at all). According to the devs this is a bug that they are investigating... Pretty serious if you ask me.The AI is just stupid in general and can not even remotely be called 'intelligent'. It's artificial and that's it.

And the AI just goes like all ICS (infinite city&outpost spam) on you:http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=370797541Yeah they put a pioneer in every single spot they can get even if it's totally useless... Frustrating over 9000.Either go in perma war and kill their pioneers before they start a city/outpost, or fill all the gaps yourself. But unlike the AI, YOU have to defend your cities/outposts from neutral monsters, they don't.

This company should at least have bought an existing engine if they can't create their own and those graphics and music and sfx... It seems as if they had no budget for this game at all.

Oh and did I mention the random crashes? Even on streams and Youtube I often see people saving, not because they fear the battle but because they fear that the game might crash.

I can't find a single reason to buy this game. Well, perhaps the first 5 minutes of the game can be fun but that's about it.

I gave FE:LH yes to reccommed because I felt it had some very nice gameplay features. I like the idea champs level up and can use items. The customization is awesome. To be able to design a unit type during play and start producing them is outstanding. For the most part the game is fun and easy to use. Now for some of the things that you should be aware of before you jump in. Serious pathing issues on game. for example it will show that you can make it to the enemy in one move. showing a straight line. when you click button your pawn is sent off on a zig zag course and does not make it there or leaves you in an enemy controlled zone even though your army and enemy army were in your zone. This sometimes leaves your army open to a spell attack that can seperate or decimate your army alowing the enemy to mop your army up. unfortunately once movement has begun there is no way to stop. some operations require double click and other single. This lends to accidental clicks and the auto end turn finishing turn before your done. lastly the most frusting for me, but bare in mind i stlll like to play, is on larger maps when map is nearly all occupied. The game starts crashing. At first i thought memory issues or graphics or what not but, this is what i found. when game crashes and i validate files one file fails. Validation fixes it and when it crashes again same file fails. I personally can continue on like this but when it happens every 4-5 turns it gets a little annoying.

Civilizations + Heroes of Might and Magic = Fallen Enchantress. Awesome game with a lot of backstory. I tried it during the free weekend, bough it and been playing since. I just wish they threw in a campaign mode like. Age of Wonders so you can bring your leader through it leveling all the time. Starting up new games on like my 4th I finally got the lvl 15 acheivement, but even there I'm only a quarter threw magi abilities. I wanna keep leveling the same character. Also the game sorely lacks anything to do with water.(I mean besides water magic) Are boats that hard? Couldn't the undead just walk? Why won't my dragon actually fly so he could go over mountains and such? Other than some minor quips here a crash or two there, I'd highly recommend this to fans of either civilizations, HOMM, or even Age of Wonders though this falls short of that game by a bit. Even they had catapults and giant spiders taking up like 2-4 slots; meanwhile, my 100x the size of me dragons take up one slot :p

Best part is you can completely customize the factions and leaders to your liking. I love customization.

This game is rich with great story, characters, spells, monsters and a ton of other great stuff. It's great fun exploring the world and finding quests and items and the tactical battles are great. I'll be playing this game for a long time to come.

After a few false starts and many patches this game is a pleasure to play, nicely balanced with the "just one more turn" factor. Many things to customise, a lovely tech tree with different focuses depending upon your playing style. Create your own units and equip them with things that make them a terror on the battlefield.

I found the AI quite good and on higher difficulties it makes a truely challenging experience. I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the 4X genre.

a lot of the reviews you are going to hear about this comes from the incredible disappointment felt in the previous iterations - Elemental: War of Magic was a game I liked a lot but was pretty broken, and then it was remade to fallen enchantress, and finally legendary heroes. It has come a long way. One of my favorite games of all time is Sins of a Solar Empire so I am the kind of guy that gives Stardock the benefit of the doubt. This version of the game seems to be exactly what we were looking for. It's an RPG first, with strategy elements, and has really great combat. This is probably my last purchase for the Winter sale but I saved the best for last and look forward to dropping a couple hundred hours into this.